News Release

Action to Preserve Open Internet

April 25, 2014

The New York Times is reporting: “In the nine weeks since the Federal Communications Commission said it would try, for a third time, to write new rules to secure an open Internet, at least 69 companies, interest groups and trade associations — over one a day — have met with or otherwise lobbied commission officials on what the rules should specify.

“That effort does not count the more than 10,000 comments that individuals have submitted to the F.C.C.”

A petition sponsored by Demand Progress and RootsAction.org demanding commitment to “the principle of equal access to the Internet” has resulted in nearly 40,000 people sending protest emails to each of the FCC commissioners in the 24 hours that began Thursday morning.

DAVID SEGAL, davidadamsegal at gmail.com, @demandprogress
A former Rhode Island state representative, Segal is now executive director of Demand Progress. He said today, “In order to get the FCC to save net neutrality, we need to bring a lot of public and political pressure to bear right away. That means making our voices heard by the FCC and urging lawmakers to pressure the FCC to reclassify Internet as a ‘telecommunications service.’ Demand Progress and RootsAction and many other organizations are working towards those ends — to win, we’ll need to enlist the help of hundreds of thousands of Americans over the next couple of weeks.”

JEFF COHEN, jeffco at hvc.rr.com
Cohen is co-founder of RootsAction.org and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. He is available for a limited number of interviews. He said today, “People are right to be outraged that Obama’s FCC is moving to extinguish an open Internet, especially since then-candidate Obama promised in 2008: ‘I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality.’ We must not allow net neutrality to be just another broken promise. Let’s organize like mad to save the Internet, as if democracy and press freedom both depend on it…because they do. If we lose net neutrality, that will subvert today’s booming independent media — now much stronger than in many decades, thanks largely to an open Internet.”